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Friday, 17 January 2014

Fancy Things Friday: The awesomeness that is Tumblr and Fandom

**SNEAKY SPOILER ALERT!! Although the content of this post is completely spoiler free, all links within will go to spoilers for Sherlock: Season 3. You have been warned.**

Welcome to Fancy Things Friday, where I find something I find fancy and cool and talk about it. This week's Fancy Thing is something new to me, but probably not to anyone else who uses the Internet. Today, I would like to talk about Tumblr. Now, up until a couple of weeks ago, I was incredibly reluctant to sign up for any other social networking site than the multitude I already had become a member of. Mainly because my tendency towards procrastination at the hands of the Internet is already to an obsessive level, I don't need any other reason to drop off the edge of the real life world. However, after the first episode of this series of Sherlock aired, a friend uploaded the top Tumblr Fandom reaction posts onto Facebook, and I laughed so hard that all breath left me. It was at this point that I realised I would not be able to fully experience the joy of Sherlock unless I had thousands of other fans to enjoy it with. So, I finally gave into the pull of Tumblr, not really sure what it was that I was letting myself into, and created an account. Now I would like to point out at this time that I am pretty much a newbie when it comes to Tumblr. I was shamed more than I can say when I had to learn new Internetual lingo. I had thought I was pretty up to date with what I knew, but it would appear I was not. So, if you are interested in discovering the world of Sherlock on Tumblr, or other fandom worlds, let me introduce you to one word in particular that you will need to be able to understand in order to get the full experience.To "Ship"I was first introduced to this word the day after Sherlock Season 3, Episode 1 was aired. I was looking for a video clip on YouTube of the famous sexy kiss for my blog. Once found, I thought I might check through the comments made on this video. A lot of it involved comments I totally understood and completely agreed with, like:

"

How the hell will any kiss match up to that ever again? I've watched it 25 times now and my stomach still drops like a roller coaster every single time.﻿"

"DAMN SON."

"Jawline of D E A T H"

"REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT. DIE INSIDE A THOUSAND TIMES."

And then this comment came along:

"SOMEONE PLS HELP ME I CAN'T BREATHE THIS IS MY SHIP SAILING OMGGGGGGGG﻿"

I won't lie. I sat there, read that, and thought "Where's she travelling to?" And then "Ship" arrived all over the comments and, after the 15th or 16th time of seeing this word, I realised there was probably some other meaning to it than actually a mode of transport for the open seas.

After being on Tumblr for a couple of hours I soon became aware now of the true Internetual meaning of the word "Ship."

To ship is to take two people and basically want them to be together. It happens everywhere apparently. An example of this in a sentence would be: "OMG, I totally Ship Sherlock and Moriarty".In terms of Sherlock, the Fandom "Ship" pretty much every possible pair, although the top people are:

Sherlolly: Sherlock and Molly

Johnlock: John and Sherlock

Sherliarty??: I'm not too sure how to join together that one, but Sherlock and Moriarty

And my personal favourite:

Mystrade: Mycroft and Lestrade. This is my favourite as the fans who "Ship" this really don't have much to go on, due to there being no scenes of them both together. To the point that, in the last episode of the series, there was a 3 second clip of them both in one shot, and the Fandom jumped on it unlike anything I've ever seen. It was copied all over Tumblr, even though it consisted of them both just sitting down on either side of a desk. It was the only thing they had, guys! I applaud their devotion.

Once I had that definition down, I was all over Tumblr 24/7. I'll admit, I've only really used it for Sherlock posts and blogs but I'm sure, once a new obsession begins on TV I'll have something new to use it for. But I will take this moment to thoroughly encourage you all to check the blogs out on there. Only if you've seen it though, of course. This will be no fun to you if you haven't and don't want to know what happens.

If you just want to read everything possible, then simply type in "Sherlock" in your Tumblr Search. However, I can recommend some highly satisfying Fandom blogs which have never failed to disappoint in the past couple of weeks:

bbcsherlockftw

bbcsherlock

sherlockspeare

You follow those three and you'll be laughing.. literally.

Also, feel free to follow me, although I'm not quite sure how to properly post on it yet, I've done it at least twice and I'm up for learning. I'm (surprise surprise) on there as Plumsauce10.

Also, I appreciate that this has been a crash course on Tumblr, written by a woman who has about 2% knowledge on the subject, so feel free to add any additional comments on what makes it so cool in the comments below, I'm always happy to learn and fall in love with new stuff.